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From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Labor Zionist leaders once viewed
settlement as a critical component of Jewish independence. But they have
abandoned this cause, as their opposition to the nation-state law
clearly demonstrates.

On
Nov. 10, 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution
3379, which said that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial
discrimination." In response, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin held a
special cabinet session and announced a proper Zionist countermeasure:
Four more Jewish communities would be built in the Golan Heights.

This cabinet resolution was a natural
reaction by a Labor-led government because Jewish settlement had always
been the lifeblood of the party and its precursors. Rabin's message was
that even as the U.N. condemns Zionism, we are going to move head with
realizing its vision. How? By building new Jewish settlements in the
land of Israel.

But now Labor is attacking the nation-state
law and zeroing in on the section stating that "the State of Israel
views the development of Jewish settlements as a national value and
priority and will act to encourage and promote the establishment and
consolidation of such settlements." This makes it clear that Labor is
ideologically bankrupt.

Having Labor say the provisions on Jews
settlement are "racist" and "nationalist" is akin to having
ultra-Orthodox parties lambaste Torah study and claim that the five
books of Moses are a travesty.

In July 1919, the Poale Zion movement
decided to send a delegation to Palestine with a goal: Come back with a
plan on how to establish a socialist entity there. At the time, the
movement was the largest and strongest socialist party in the Jewish
world.

The head of the delegation was Nachman
Syrkin and its members included people who would end up having prominent
roles in the Zionist movement, including David Ben-Gurion, Israel's
first prime minister. The plan they provided was the foundation for
Labor Zionism for many decades thereafter. At its core was a vision of
Jewish settlement in the land of Israel as a means of realizing the
dream of Zionism and socialism.

The delegation secretary, future president
Zalman Shazar, recalled Syrkin's role: "He was the father of the entire
plan; being the great visionary that he was, with deep economic
understanding, he would expound on the intricate details of establishing
a Jewish utopia."

Over the years, a schism emerged among
Labor Zionists: Adherents of Ben-Gurion saw the establishment of a
Jewish state to be the be all and end all of Zionism. Those who
subscribed to Yitzhak Tabenkin and the Kibbutz Hameuchad movement saw
the settling of the land to be the main tenet of Zionism and considered
the state to an auxiliary that would ensure uninterrupted Jewish
settlement. That is why Tabenkin opposed the partition plan.

After the state was founded, the two camps
were at odds: Ben-Gurion wanted to rally the country behind a collective
effort to build state institutions while Tabenkin's focus was on
continued pioneering work that would be separate from the state. But
they had common ground on one thing: the need to continue settling the
land.

Ben-Gurion believed that building Jewish
communities should be handled by the state and the Israel Defense
Forces. That is why he established the Nahal Brigade and that is why the
compulsory service law initially mandated that every soldier dedicate a
year to settlement activity.

At the height of the War of Independence,
Ben Gurion said: "We liberated the Negev and the Galilee. The Galilee –
all of it. The Negev – most of it, and perhaps more of it could be
liberated. But we have yet to settle the Negev and the Galilee. It is
not enough to just expel the foreign invader, we must bring the Jewish
settler to that area. Land cannot be held over time without settlement.
This is a project that will span generations"

In a Knesset speech in 1949, he said: "We
must ensure that the education we instill inside the classroom and
beyond, in our literature and in the media, leads to the emergence of a
pioneering generation that considers the settling of the land to be its
mission and its role in Jewish and human history."

The man who made this vision into a reality
was Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. No other Zionist leader has ever
matched Eshkol's contribution to Jewish settlement. It is thanks to him
that hundreds of Jewish communities were founded, mainly after Israel's
independence. During his premiership in the 1960s, he presided over the
Six-Day War, and following Israel's victory he supported the
establishment of Jewish communities beyond the Green Line. Although
Labor Zionism would ultimately have its disagreements over where Israel
should build, there was no disagreement over building settlements.

Even when the right-wing Gush Emunim
movement began campaigning for more settlements in Judea and Samaria,
activists from the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair demonstrated against them
but urged them to settle the Galilee and the Negev instead.

It is only recently that Jewish settlement has become a dirty word on the Left, throwing it into an ideological crisis.

Uri HeitnerSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/labor-zionism-turned-jewish-settlement-into-a-dirty-word/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter